Rams offensive line coach coach and run-game coordinator Aaron Kromer says open communication is the hallmark of his coaching style. “I don’t preach,” he said. “We talk. We communicate. I think that’s where you can gain more knowledge about a defense, when you’re openly talking about it.” (Photo by Andy Holzman)

THOUSAND OAKS – Aaron Kromer was mid-flight, somewhere between New Orleans and San Francisco, when his best shot at an NFL head coaching job slipped away, unbeknownst to him.

It was January 2012, and the Saints were set to play the 49ers that Sunday in the divisional round. In his third season as the Saints offensive line coach, Kromer had built one of the NFL’s most stalwart fronts. His impressive work garnered the attention of teams around the league, none more so than the St. Louis Rams, who reached out to schedule an interview for their head coaching vacancy.

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But the interview, set for the next day in San Francisco, was cancelled before Kromer’s plane landed. When Rams executives arrived, there were messages waiting from the coach they’d already offered the position. Jeff Fisher had accepted the job.

Through the tumultuous few years that came after that, Kromer continued on as offensive line coach, plugging away through the Bountygate chaos in New Orleans, through locker room unrest in Chicago and an off-the-field incident in Buffalo, until an opportunity finally arose to join the team for which he was meant to interview, four years before.

Now, as the Rams stand on the brink of a Super Bowl berth, no assistant is more crucial to the L.A. offense than Kromer, whose offensive line has been one of the best in the league again this season. No team has graded better in run blocking than the Rams, according to Pro Football Focus, while only four teams have graded better in pass-blocking situations. With the Saints dominant defensive front on tap, no unit is arguably more vital to the Rams offensive success in Sunday’s NFC championship game than the line.

Never was that more apparent than last week’s playoff victory over the Cowboys. The Rams offensive line dominated the Cowboys’ ferocious front seven, steamrolling them for a season-high 273 rushing yards. It was a tour de force performance for the Rams line, which found a way to exploit every imaginable vulnerability in a Cowboys defensive line that hadn’t otherwise showed any all season.

“Coach Kromer was definitely the center point of all that happening,” left tackle Andrew Whitworth said.

The foundation for such a performance – and the masterful gameplan that preceded it – was forged two years before, when Kromer arrived in L.A. to inherit one of the league’s worst offensive lines. That offseason, the Rams signed veterans in Whitworth and center John Sullivan to fortify the front – two signings that would help change the entire culture of the team. But the most important shift up front was more subtle than that.

Kromer knew from experience that any unit that struggled to communicate was doomed to fail. During his final season in New Orleans, as the team tried to stay afloat amid suspensions to Sean Payton and other coaches stemming from Bountygate, Kromer was named interim coach for six games. The Saints lost their first four games under his watch, as Kromer scrambled to deal with a chaotic situation.

“The difficult part was the situation more than the job,” Kromer said. “The coach was suspended, and he was coming back, and (interim coach) Joe Vitt was coming back, too. I hadn’t coached the preseason. The continuity was not there.”

From the start, Kromer set a different tone in the Rams offensive line room. He encourages constant conversation, with different linemen constantly chiming in on what they see.

“I don’t preach,” Kromer said. “We talk. We communicate. I think that’s where you can gain more knowledge about a defense, when you’re openly talking about it. Somebody might see something and think it means something, and it doesn’t. If they verbalize and don’t have to be afraid of being wrong, you can be right a lot more often. That’s the number-one thing. Guys are afraid in a lot of rooms to make a mistake. We want people to talk.”

Not every room is so simpatico. But in the Rams offensive line room, the conversation is “especially easy,” Kromer says. Most often, it’s led by Whitworth or Sullivan, both of whom are encyclopedic in their football knowledge. But “everyone feels comfortable contributing,” Sullivan says. Together, for hours every week, they search for exploitable tendencies on tape – in scheme, in technique, in pre-snap movements and everything in between – each sharing their thoughts amongst the group

“It’s an open forum,” Sullivan continued. “And because of that, everyone feels an ownership over what they’re doing.”
In this 2017 file photo, offensive line coach and run game coordinator Aaron Kramer leads his unit across the field during the Rams’ training camp at UC Irvine. (Photo by Kevin Sullivan, Orange County Register/SCNG)

When the room studies an opposing team’s film, Kromer often goes from position to position on defense to explain why the play unfolds as it does, rather than outlining how. This notion is central to Kromer’s approach. “I’d never watched the safety to figure out an alignment before,” says rookie tackle Joe Noteboom. But in the room, Kromer is deliberate in explaining the precise machinations of a defense’s choices.

“If they don’t know why, they can’t make the adjustments,” Kromer says. “Everything is about why. The beauty is all the millennials want to know why. It works out perfectly.”

Last week, in the locker room following their win over the Cowboys, one of those millennial linemen offered some insight into exactly why the Rams’ plans to dominate Dallas’ defensive front worked so well. Right guard Austin Blythe told reporters after the game that the Rams offensive line had figured out specific tells that told them what the Cowboys front would do before they did it. With that knowledge, the Rams were able to run all over them.

The rest of the Rams line was less forthcoming when asked about it. “That’s a big part of what we do every week in the NFL,” Whitworth said – and Blythe clammed up when asked to explain his post-game evaluation. But even a cursory watch of last Saturday’s victory would suggest that the Rams’ offensive line had the Cowboys figured out from the start.

Recreating that masterful game plan, with a Super Bowl bid on the line, will be no easy task against a Saints defense that ranked third in the league in rush defense DVOA. But in the offensive line room, that conversation has been ongoing all week.

“I can’t say enough about the job that Kromer’s done,” Whitworth said. “Really, just how amazing of a coach he’s been all season long. It never ceases to really amaze me. Every single week, it’s like something happens, whether it’s a high or a low – how he handles it, how he, really, directs our group. He’s a tremendous football coach and somebody in this league that I think deserves a ton of respect for the job he does.”

Perhaps, in light of his line’s tremendous play this season, that respect will lead to another job interview in the near future. Though, he’s not so sure about that.

“Guys that are calling pass plays get head coaching jobs,” Kromer said. “So if it happens, it happens.”

But with the underappreciated Rams front playing its best football of the season, that certainly seems like a conversation worth having.

“This is a great job I have with Sean McVay,” Kromer said. “He makes sense. Football makes sense. We learn so much together every day, and this team we’ve all put together, win, lose or draw, just working with these guys, it’s an ideal situation.”

Ryan Kartje is a sports features reporter, with a special focus on the NFL and college sports. He has worked for the Orange County Register since 2012, when he was hired as UCLA beat writer. His enterprise work on the rise and fall of the daily fantasy sports industry (http://www.ocregister.com/articles/industry-689093-fantasy-daily.html) was honored in 2015 with an Associated Press Sports Editors’ enterprise award in the highest circulation category. His writing has also been honored by the Football Writers Association of America and the U.S. Basketball Writers Association. A graduate of the University of Michigan, Ryan worked for the Bloomington (Ind.) Herald-Times and Fox Sports Wisconsin, before moving out west to live by the beach and eat copious amounts of burritos.

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